e way was prepared for that final subjugation which was ultimately
affected by the Sargonids.

Still, the Babylonians seemed to have looked with complacency on this
period, and they certainly made it an era from which to date their later
history. Perhaps, however, they had not much choice in this matter.
Nabonassar was a man of energy and determination. Bent probably on
obliterating the memory of the preceding period of subjugation, he
"destroyed the acts of the kings who had preceded him;" and the result
was that the war of his accession became almost necessarily the era from
which subsequent events had to be dated.

Nabonassar appears to have lived on friendly terms with Tiglath-Pileser,
the contemporary monarch of Assyria, who early in his reign invaded the
southern country, reduced several princes of the districts about Babylon
to subjection, and forced Merodach-Baladan, who had succeeded his
father, Yakin, in the low region, to become his tributary. No war seems
to have been waged between Tiglath-Pileser and Nabonassar. The king of
Babylon may have seen with satisfaction the humiliation of his immediate
neighbors and rivals, and may have felt that their subjugation rather
improved than weakened his own position. At any rate it tended to place
him before the nation as their only hope and champion--the sole barrier
which protected their country from a return of the old servitude.

Nabonassar held the throne of Babylon for fourteen years, from B.C. 747
to B.C. 733. It has generally been supposed that this period is the same
with that regarded by Herodotus as constituting the reign of Semiramis.
As the wife or as the mother of Nabonassar, that lady (according to
many) directed the affairs of the Babylonian state on behalf of her
husband or her son. The theory is not devoid of a certain plausibility,
and it is no doubt possible that it may be true; but at present it is
a mere conjecture, wholly unconfirmed by the native records; and we may
question whether on the whole it is not more probable that the Semiramis
of Herodotus is misplaced. In a former volume it was shown that a
Semiramis flourished in Assyria towards the end of the ninth and the
beginning of the eighth centuries B.C.---during the period, that is,
of Babylonian subjection to Assyria. She may have been a Babylonian
princess, and have exercised an authority in the southern capital. It
would seem therefore to be more probable that she is the individual whom